If you were a tree, what kind would you be?

Not a poodle!

A chain saw? Not your average ambient sound for city dwellers. But when I realized the man holding the saw was right outside my third floor apartment, I panicked.

He didn't mean me any harm, but he was trimming the tree outside. When I saw the finished product, with what seemed like very small clumps of leaves left at the end of surviving branches, I thought "poodle tree."

Officially it's some kind of ash... and now an amputee. But at least the more normal sparrow chirps and sounds of the city have returned.

Barbara Walters has been widely lampooned since her 1981 interview with actress Katharine Hepburn. She never asked the question: "If you were a tree, what kind would you be?" Video clips confirm Hepburn initiated it by saying she would like to be a tree, and Walters merely followed up with, "What kind of a tree?"

Come up with your own answer at Arbor Day dot Org.